RELIVE THE PAST TO RELIEVE THE FUTURE
Also for: Xbox 360, Xbox One
It's interesting to travel back to a time when open worlds were still regarded
as up-and-coming. Developers were still trying to perfect the formula, figure
out what to put where and how to structure it narratively. A spiritual
successor to the 3D Prince of Persia-series, Ubisoft's
original Assassin's Creed presents its world as a playground. It
has the player traverse entire cities to get up close and personal with
assassination targets, and then escape and disappear into the crowded streets.
Rather than simply exploring your surroundings, you exploit them. You feel
like a silent predator as you enter the psyche of a professional medieval
hitman with excellent parkour skills. Through his eyes, a city is no more than
a series of interconnected obstacle courses. Crowds of people can be used as
cover. Buildings are perceived as climbable facades, and once you reach their
highest peak you can get back to the ground quickly by performing insane leaps
of faith into haystacks far below.
Unfortunately, Assassin's Creed suffers from loads of serious flaws that make
it hard to enjoy - and I'll get to those - but they cannot completely
overshadow the sheer brilliance of this concept. Back in 2007 we had never
experienced anything quite like this sense of freedom and verticality in open
world games. Of course, today statements like that are redundant. We know that
the franchise evolved into one of the most popular and influential in modern
gaming.
Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, its twelfth main entry, is about to be
released as I type these words.
But the original Assassin's Creed was never considered a full-fledged
masterpiece. Even back then it got mixed reviews, and with the passing of time
the problems only become clearer. The controls seem to have a mind of their
own, and the piss-poor PS3 framerate makes a mess of both movement and combat.
The gameplay loop gets tedious awful quick, and poor audio mixing combined
with a lack of subtitles makes the story hard to follow (at least for a
non-native English speaker like myself, who also is slightly hard of hearing).
That last part is unfortunate, because from what I can glean the story is
surprisingly good and nuanced. It mainly takes place in the Middle East, anno
1191, during the third crusade. Here you get to play as an assassin named
Altair (voiced by Philip Shahbaz), who's stripped of his rank and
privileges after ignoring the creed of his guild, putting all his fellows in
danger. To restore his standing he needs to perform a series of
assassinations. As he proceeds to do so, he's surprised to learn about his
victims' sometimes noble agendas.
This is interspersed with a modern-day framing story about a kidnapped
bartender, Desmond Miles (Nolan North), who is used as a guinea pig in a
corporate experiment. He is forced to connect to his ancestor's genetic
memories through a Virtual Reality-device called the Animus. His ancestor, as
you might have guessed, is Altair. Both of the intriguing storylines involve
the endless feud between the templars and the assassins. The claustrophobic
framing story makes the historic open world feel all the more liberating.
That only lasts a short while, however, as the game starts repeating the same
gameplay loop over and over. Before each assassination you need to research
your target by eavesdropping, pickpocketing or interrogating his underlings.
All of these activities involve laying low, blending in with the cityfolk and
performing as little actual gameplay as possible. Under no circumstances could
these restrictive tasks be called fun, and the information you get is far from
useful.
To make matters worse, I despise Altair as an individual and dislike him as a
character. His voice actor's flat delivery does little to remedy that. Altair
starts off as arrogant to an insufferable degree, making his arc towards
redemption all the more predictable. To add insult to injury, his controls is
the most devastating flaw of the entire game, making him suffer as a
player-character as well.
Melee combat relies heavily on timing through actions like parrying, dodging
and chaining sword strikes to activate finishers. But the PS3-port's low
framerate creates an input lag, making it difficult to respond in
time. Even running around suffers. Too much is automated, and it
sometimes feels like you're instructing Altair like a pet rather than
embodying him. In the end he does as he damn well pleases.
Nowhere is this flaw as apparent as when you attempt to escape the city
guards. They might chase you down a street, and if you run too close to a
bench, Altair may suddenly decide to sit down and try to blend with the
spectators. Of course, this doesn't work if they see you do it, and it's hard
to seem inconspicuous when armor-clad soldiers surround you and start
brandishing their swords.
I'm glad Assassin's Creed became a hit because of what it eventually led to,
although I cannot say it's well-deserved in this case. Running around freely,
climbing any wall, assassinating unsuspecting guards and hiding in the crowd
is done with the perverse wish-fulfillment of a psychopath. I like that
aspect, in spite of the control scheme's shortcomings. But the stifling stuff
- all of the chores and repetitiveness of the main story - undermines all
that. This game ultimately feels big and hollow. It's got the structure right,
but needs to fill it with better content.
It also feels like a wasted opportunity to learn practically nothing about
this time and place in history. We're treading some sacred ground here - your
playgrounds are the cities of Damascus, Acre and Jerusalem in the Middle ages.
And visually the cities may be highly detailed, but they seem drab and bled
dry of all color. It's as if Altair put his hidden blade to their arteries and
let their lifeblood spill into the gutter. It suits his bloodthirsty persona,
I guess, since all you can really do well in Assassin's Creed is climb and
murder.
[Screenshots from MobyGames: www.mobygames.com]
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